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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28901934">all the world’s a stage</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fav_littleleaf/pseuds/fav_littleleaf'>fav_littleleaf</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Horror Imagery, Dancing, M/M, MAG 160 reimagined, Tenderness, battling humanity vs monstrosity, consensual fear marks AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:27:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,479</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28901934</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fav_littleleaf/pseuds/fav_littleleaf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon and Elias dance at the end of the world. </p><p>  <i>Their dress shoes tap and echo across the slick floors, lonely in their soliloquy. Elias draws up music in their heads, just for them. He doesn’t have to ask to know the music comes from a joyous home with a crackling fire, cocoa and marshmallows, laughter that shakes the tinsel on the tree. A home that will soon be nothing more than ash and marred skulls twisted into eyeless stares.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>all the world’s a stage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em> Last scene of all,<br/>
</em> <em> That ends this strange eventful history,  <br/>
</em> <em> Is second childishness and mere oblivion, <br/>
</em> <em> Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. </em></p><p>As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII <br/>
Shakespeare</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>Will you come back for me, Jon? </em>
</p><p>Jon gazes at his reflection in the mirror. After all this time, he can’t manage to make his tie cooperate. Martin used to come to his office with tea and <em> good mornings </em>on his lips, only to shake his head and set it straight down at the sight of Jon’s crooked attire. He’d fix it, every time. But that isn’t the world they live in anymore.</p><p>Jon sighs and gives up on that disaster. He turns his attention to his suit jacket instead, straightening out the creases as best he can, buttoning his errant sleeve. It’s Elias’s fault he has to do any of this anyway. Elias wanted to end the world in style; Jon wanted to get the fuss over with.</p><p>
  <em> I will always come back for you, love. </em>
</p><p>The room is cold, barren behind him. A grand stage stretches past the edges of his vision, framed at the edges by deep blood-red curtains. Spotlights shine on a non-existent pas de deux. Jon closes his eyes to imagine them: a woman in a breathtaking gown, tight ringlets framing plump cheeks, turning in the arms of a man who dips her until her mouth splits wide with bliss. Beautiful until they turn towards the camera; until their screams shatter the crystal chandeliers.</p><p>Does he feel anxious about what he’s about to do? About the fact that their screams will be his lullaby on the last night of an earth where smiles mean anything at all? The fact that it may all fail, without reason or explanation or restitution for his toil? </p><p>Jon opens his eyes again, dismissing the thoughts. Anxiety is a thing of humanness: a wild, foreign thing. A thing he discarded once and for all when he chose to return to that hospital bed rather than succumb to death.</p><p>
  <em> Do you promise? </em>
</p><p>Jon stares at his own eyes, hard. They’re grey-blue, flat, nothing at all like the beauty Elias says they are. He’s about to become the darling of the universe — something that he and Elias have worked towards for <em> years </em>now — and his prize sits just beyond the veil. To refuse to peel it back now would be folly of the highest order.</p><p>
  <em> I promise, Martin. </em>
</p><p>“Jon? Are you ready?”</p><p>“Elias,” Jon returns. “I see you’re —”</p><p>He stops talking abruptly when he catches sight of Elias in the mirror. He wears a white suit — jacket, vest, tie, all pristine alabaster glow — overshadowed only by the brightness of his smile as he walks up behind Jon. His hands effortlessly find Jon’s waist, like that is where they are meant to be, in <em>before </em>and in <em>after:</em> the only thing that remains.</p><p>Elias dips his head to mouth at his neck, and Jon lets out a breathy sigh at the warmth of his tongue. “Your tie is an abomination, Jon,” he murmurs.</p><p>“Help me fix it, then.”</p><p>Elias frowns at his tone, but doesn’t chide him. He turns Jon towards him by the shoulders and gently pulls his tie loose.</p><p>Jon swallows as Elias’s fingertips brush across his throat. Having Elias so near makes him want to fall into his arms and close his eyes, as it always does. “Do you ever…” He swallows, has to start again. “Do you ever feel like you’ve made a mistake?”</p><p>“A mistake?” Elias’s eyes draw up to meet his. His fingers come up also, to trace the long scar across Jon’s neck. “This is the greatest victory of our lives. You deserve this, my Archive.”</p><p>“But do <em> they </em>deserve it?”</p><p>Elias raises an eyebrow, his gaze heated. “What has gotten into you?”</p><p>Jon doesn’t answer, and then Elias’s hands pause at his neck. He knows Elias is sifting through his head, which he usually finds objectionable, but sometimes it’s just… <em> easier. </em>When his fingers resume their path, they’re more possessive than they were before, and less gentle than what Jon had been used to on soft mornings at the Institute before he drank his tea.</p><p>Elias sighs. “You know we can’t save Martin.”</p><p>“I know,” Jon snaps.</p><p>“I hope you also know you’re the only one who can snap at me without suffering a great deal.” His tone is mild, but he tugs on Jon’s tie to secure the knot a little harder than necessary.</p><p>“What an accomplishment.”</p><p>Elias turns him back towards the mirror and steps up behind Jon. His hands come up to smooth Jon’s collar. The contrast between them — Elias dressed all in white, Jon all in black — looks unfairly good. Elias knows this, of course.</p><p>“That was always the thing you clung onto hardest, wasn’t it? <em> Love,” </em>Elias says. “We won’t need that anymore, Jon, not in the new world.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Jon sighs and tangles his fingers with Elias’s when they wrap once more around his waist. “Yeah, alright.”</p><p>“Come now, darling,” Elias whispers in his ear. “Dance with me.”</p><p>Elias takes his hand and leads him away from the mirror, towards center stage. Jon relents; he doesn’t know if Elias will want to touch him anymore when he’s the king of the world. <em> If you’re king, what does that does that make me?  </em></p><p>Their dress shoes tap and echo across the slick floors, lonely in their soliloquy. Elias draws up music in their heads, just for them. He doesn’t have to ask to know the music comes from a joyous home with a crackling fire, cocoa and marshmallows, laughter that shakes the tinsel on the tree. A home that will soon be nothing more than ash and marred skulls twisted into eyeless stares.</p><p>They dance slowly, tangled in each other’s arms, to the rhythm of the music only they can hear. Jon rests his head against Elias’s shoulder and lets him lead, inhaling deeply in his scent and willing himself to experience nothing else. The hand at the small of his back, the warmth of fingers intertwined with his own; the familiar scratch of linen against his cheek. It feels like they’re not saying goodbye to the old world but putting it on hold, existing outside it for just a moment.</p><p>Jon is filled with the sense that he belongs here, in this halfling world between safety and terror. He shouldn’t — couldn’t if he wanted to — but it seduces him all the same, here in Elias’s arms.</p><p>As he relaxes into the mindless repetition of their steps, a voice echoes in his head, different this time than before. It doesn’t come from his memories, but he doesn’t have to guess about who is speaking.</p><p>
  <em> He’s not coming back for you, Martin. </em>
</p><p>Jon tries to resist the invasion to his mind, but it’s useless. He can very well turn back on this as much as he can choose to reject the feeling of Elias’s mouth pressed against his skin, lips parted deliciously, breaths coming in hot little puffs of air over tingling gooseflesh.</p><p>
  <em> Don’t say that. Jon loves me, I know it. </em>
</p><p>“Elias, don’t,” Jon breathes.</p><p>“Don’t what?” Elias smiles and shifts his hand at Jon’s back to draw him closer. He kisses Jon’s cheek, his lips full and soft. “Tell me what you think it will be like. How sweet it will be when the world is finally ours.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jon says automatically.</p><p>“Come on,” Elias whispers. They’re barely dancing now, just swaying to the lilt of the music. “Everything you want, everything you’ve been working for… let yourself imagine it.”</p><p>
  <em> How do you know he loves you? </em>
</p><p>He tries to see, but what arises in his mind is a swirling amalgam of feeling and images and things too strange to name. “It hurts, everything hurts,” Jon murmurs into Elias’s collar. “The Panopticon, far above the world. Drones, everywhere. Surveying the barren earth.”</p><p>
  <em> How do you truly know? </em>
</p><p>Elias is smiling wide, bright with play. “A calliope organ, winding over and over. Dolls without mouths, screaming —”</p><p>The feeling starts to prickle over Jon, like burning, like pleasure. “— until they’re ripped apart. Men in trenches, trying to hide from gunfire. From fear. But when they turn around?”</p><p>“It will be like nothing you’ve ever seen. A feast of terror, humanity as nothing more than pigs lined for slaughter, apples between their teeth.” He twirls Jon in his arms, and he spins, spins, away and back again as he was always meant to. “It will taste sweeter than the brightest apple, my dear.”</p><p>
  <em> It’s not like love means anything anymore, does it, Martin? </em>
</p><p>Jon thrills with it, digs his fingers into Elias’s neck, his body pressed flush against his. Maybe he doesn’t know what will happen, maybe all those people, <em> Martin, </em> shouldn’t hurt, but the visions tug at him like magnets. His legs throb to <em> run </em>back to the mirror, to recite the incantation now, to fill his starving, aching heart.</p><p>“Don’t tell me you don’t want it,” Elias murmurs, his voice husky and low. </p><p>
  <em> I just know, Elias!  </em>
</p><p><em> He promised me. He </em> promised <em> me. </em></p><p>Jon shoves Elias away. <em> “Stop </em>it!”</p><p>Martin’s voice is so broken, so <em> soft </em>the second time he says it. It’s vile, makes his skin crawl, makes him want to shout until the world ends. And maybe he fucking will. It’s too much, it’s all too much: the pleasure, the guilt, the love, the hatred, all a radiant, impossible swirl inside him.</p><p>Elias isn’t laughing, but his eyes are bright; he may as well be. “Are you scared, Jon?”</p><p>“You need me, Elias.” His whole body is shaking, but he crosses his arms and tries to ignore how cold it feels without Elias’s body against his. “You need me, so you had better be careful about what you say right now.”</p><p>Elias seems unperturbed. “Perhaps you’ll allow me to answer for you. Of course you’re afraid. Of course you’re hurt. You live to be afraid, Jon, you live to <em> feel</em>. Don’t be ashamed of that.”</p><p>Jon shakes his head. His cheeks are hot; he’s doing a poor job of preventing tears.</p><p>Elias steps forward. His hands are raised, like he’s afraid Jon will run off or attack. “It’s a gorgeous thing that you feel so much. You’ve retained your humanity more than any monster I know.”</p><p>It doesn’t seem gorgeous to him; it seems messy and complicated and painful. But he’s always been so drawn to it, so utterly unable to resist its pull. He does it now: steps forward to Elias, until they are once again in each other’s orbit, pushing and pulling against each other like the moon and its tide.</p><p>“But you can’t let your feelings destroy everything you’ve worked for,” Elias whispers, his hands slowly, gently closing on Jon’s arms. “Every good thing demands sacrifice.”</p><p>Jon sighs, bites his lip. Closes his eyes. He shivers under Elias’s touch. </p><p>Visions of the world flash behind his eyes, silent, waiting for their herald’s choice.</p><p>“Do you love me?” Jon whispers. </p><p>He doesn’t thread the question with compulsion; he wants Elias to choose to answer. To choose to love him.</p><p>Elias laughs. Easily, softly. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”</p><p>Jon opens his eyes to find Elias’s gaze intense upon him. Elias traces Jon’s cheek, thumb dragging across his lower lip, fingertips pressing into his hairline. Jon parts his lips instinctively, and the next thing he feels is Elias’s mouth, hot and wet and perfect under him.</p><p>Elias tugs him in by the collar, deepening the kiss, and Jon whimpers into it, bringing his arms up around his neck. His body arches against Elias. Feeling him everywhere, pressed against his chest, his hips, fingers digging into soft skin at the base of his neck — it fills Jon with the need to make it <em> his, </em>once and for all.</p><p>“I want it,” Jon says as he pulls back. His breaths come hard. “I’m ready.”</p><p>“You know it by heart?”</p><p>Jon steps back and holds out his arm for Elias, returning to position. His smile lights up his entire face. <em> “You who watch and know and understand none,” </em>he whispers.</p><p>Elias beams in answer and takes Jon’s hand. Jon doesn’t break eye contact with Elias, even as they begin to dance in earnest, as the spotlights dim in the presence of their resplendent connection.</p><p>
  <em> “You who listen and hear and will not comprehend.”  </em>
</p><p>The music begins again, from a different house this time, a sultry tango built from the buttery legato of a cello and its accordion. Jon matches Elias stride for stride, his heart racing; he could swear from his fingers on Elias’s pulse that he is just as enraptured. With Jon, with this ritual, with standing on the precipice of the ruined world and <em> laughing. </em> </p><p>Jon can barely breathe anymore to whisper the next line. Elias pulls his entire body against him from behind, his hand splayed across Jon’s chest. “<em>You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.” </em></p><p>Jon shivers, feeling power coursing through him, all senses vibrating on knife’s edge. Elias’s lips ghost over the tender skin just behind his ear as he holds Jon there for a suspended breath, the tension ratcheting between them.</p><p>Then Elias releases him in a twirl, their fingers clutched tight to each others’, for Jon to command at the height of the distance between them: “<em>Come to us in your wholeness.” </em></p><p>Then they return to each other like they were never apart at all. Elias pulls him in close and their foreheads touch, their mouths centimetres apart.</p><p>
  <em> “Come to us in your perfection.” </em>
</p><p>Elias tightens his arm around Jon’s back. “Hold on to me,” Elias murmurs, and that’s all the warning he gets before Elias bends at the waist in an elegant dip, taking Jon with him. </p><p>More instruments enter the fray of their little symphony: the horn’s invocation for triumph, the flute’s rhapsodic call to a broken kingdom. He has never seen nor heard such a thing in his life, much less on a bright, silent stage. In Elias’s arms, he defies gravity, he defies fear and shame; he can feel all eyes on him, pulsating, straining for his final word.</p><p>His head is aflame with power, built from the ground with brick and mortar and blood and tears. And now it’s here, in all its effulgent splendour.</p><p>
  <em> “I — open — the — door!” </em>
</p><p>As the ground convulses beneath them and the spotlights shatter, plunging them into darkness, Elias lifts him back up into his arms. He pulls their mouths together in a bruising kiss, and all around them the earth falls and twists and rips and bleeds and dies.</p><p>Jon and Elias enter the new world with eyes open, breath and hearts as one.</p>
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